Popular Front of Latvia

The Popular Front of Latvia was an anti-communist political movement in Latvia that was active from 1988 to 1993. The Popular Front was founded on 9 October 1988, and it initially sought increased autonomy or independence for Latvia, with moderate communist leaders such as Anatolijs Gorbunovs supporting the movement. The front quickly grew to 250,000 members, and it attracted ethnic minorities as well as Latvians and Russians. On 31 May 1989, the Popular Front announced that independence was the only option for Latvia's future, and the party won 138 out of the 201 seats in the Supreme Soviet in the 1989-1990 elections, the first free elections in Latvia since Karlis Ulmanis' coup in 1934. The party became the ruling party of Latvia in 1990, and members of the party took key positions in the government. From May 1990 to August 1991, Latvia went through a tense period as the Soviet Army cracked down on Latvian independence. On the streets, unarmed people built barricades and sang Latvian songs, leading to the Latvian independence uprising becoming known as the "Singing Revolution". The Popular Front faced a more difficult challenge following the Dissolution of the USSR: it had to transform Latvia's socialist economy into a free market economy. With the economy in decline, the party's popularity and membership dropped, and it gained no seats in the new Parliament following the 1993 elections, winning just 2.62% of the popular vote. The party, having failed to reinvent itself as a Christian democratic party, merged into the Christian Democratic Union of Latvia in 1993.